


Apartment Story

by exeterlinden



Category: due South
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-18
Updated: 2007-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exeterlinden/pseuds/exeterlinden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stella had always believed that the best defense was a strong offense, so she strode across the room to take Ray's jacket from him, reaching out her hand expectantly. She didn't miss the movement of his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on the fabric. "Thank you, Constable."</p><p>But he didn't hand it to her as she had expected. One hand left the coat to rub across his eyebrow. "Actually, I was planning on staying."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apartment Story

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks and extra special cookies to my betas, meresy and the_antichris.

The '98 interdepartmental Christmas party was being held at the DuPage Expo Center. She knew that Ray was going to be there, and she didn't really want to go, except she took the ASA position to network, and the Christmas parties were crucial to building good relations.

She came to the party with a game plan, drinking just enough to make her smile real and not forced. She talked over the controversial Warfield case with ASAs Hamilton and Bruener, the old wolves of the department for whom she carried great respect. She schmoozed with Lindsey Nguyen, one of the prosecutors from the Waukegan Office, trying to get a feel for her, knowing that they were going to meet in a pre-trial settlement in a few days.

She got a chance to exchange a few words with the State Attorney, and tried to make each of those words matter.

She talked to the lieutenants of the respective downtown precincts. She would have liked to talk to Lieutenant Welsh, but he was seated with his detectives and when she looked over she saw Ray sitting opposite him, his skinny hunched shoulders easily recognizable, even if the Mountie hadn't been sitting next to him, impossible to miss, inexplicably wearing his uniform when everyone else was dressed formally. Harding Welsh caught her looking and she smiled politely at his flinty, impassionate face. She didn't wait for a smile in response before looking away, spotting Lieberman in the crowd and moving towards him.

She had known when she applied for the position as Assistant State Attorney at the Naperville Office that there was a likely chance that she was going to work directly with her ex-husband, and she had known that if she did, it might affect her ability to act professionally in her dealings with that department - but she regretted that Harding had been there to see her and Ray fighting earlier in the day. She was newly employed, young and female - and she knew that she needed to nail this job to move up.

She stayed until they cleared the tables and then she spent a couple of hours dancing. She was a good dancer, but tonight she was being led by men who only danced this once every year. They started out shuffling awkwardly and by the end of the they night turned red-faced and jovial and twirled her until she felt like her arms were going to twist right off her body.

Still, she smiled and conversed and made sure to keep at least five inches of air between their bodies. It was nothing like the way she and Ray used to dance, and she found herself scanning the floor for him over the shoulders of her dance partners - longing for a little rhythm and grace - but she didn't see him anywhere.

She decided to go home after just barely intercepting Detective Carney making a grab for her ass by twirling in his grip and elbowing him hard, before apologizing sweetly. She cast a glance towards the group from the 27th on her way out, but didn't see Ray among them. 

She got her coat and purse from the wardrobe, and stepped out into the lobby. Ray was there, alone and swaying over an ashtray bin with a cigarette dangling from his lips. The back of his pale blue shirt was dappled with darker spots where it had touched his sweaty skin, and his jacket was gone, his shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows. She hesitated for a moment before going to him.

"I thought you quit?"

Ray turned his head slowly and looked at her with glassy eyes. 

"Stella." 

His voice was scratchy and slurred around the soggy stub of his cigarette, and the way his face changed when he looked at her made her forget the professional determination and low-key irritation that she’d been feeling all night.

He smelled strongly of smoke and liquor, sweat, and a hint of something sour underneath. The memory it stirred was visceral rather than concrete: a mix of emotions, ranging from being crazy in love and joyously happy to anger, exasperation, contempt.

"Give me one?"

He smiled drunkenly, eyes half closed.

"I thought you quit," he countered, but he fumbled the pack out of his shirt pocket and she waited patiently while he worked one damp, wrinkled cigarette out of the soft packaging.

They smoked in silence.

Only when Ray was this drunk did he stop crowding her with his jittery energy and hopeless passes. Late in their marriage, right before the end, she had sometimes been relieved when he came home like this; it was the only time he was half-way honest about what was going on ("_Why isn't this working?_" "_I don't want to lose you._"). He’d looked tortured, haggard, and she had put him to bed and cursed herself for not being able to let go, cursed their marriage and her stupid, stubborn love for him. The next day he’d wake up and buy her flowers, cook her dinner and dance with her, and sometimes it had been good, and sometimes it had been all wrong - and she had never been able to figure the hell out what had made the difference between one or the other.

The cigarette smoke was strong and scratchy going down her throat, but she inhaled deeply anyway; the force of an old habit, even though she hadn't smoked since she moved out of her and Ray's shared apartment and into her brand new and much bigger condo.

The filter turned warm and soft between her fingers as she smoked the cigarette down. Ray wasn't even inhaling. His cigarette hung limply from his lips as he swayed slightly, now and then tipping the cigarette with his lips to make the ashes break off and drift down into the ashtray. A few black and grey specks stuck to his shirt front.

She wondered if he had been watching her all night, if he had gotten himself this drunk to keep himself from approaching her, or to work up the courage to do so. 

She stubbed out the cigarette hard against the dirty grate of the bin.

"Come on, Ray, I'll take you home."

He thankfully didn't voice any assumptions.

He couldn't remember where he had left his jacket - “_it’s a thirty-dollar coat, doesn't matter_" - so she dragged him outside in the wet, biting cold, standing close to him while his flushed skin turned goose-pimpled and clammy in the short time it took for the cab to arrive. She let him put his head on her shoulder while she gave the cab driver the address for his new apartment, then let him doze off leaning heavy and limp against her.

He didn't try for anything until they were inside the hallway of his apartment, dark and alien to her, and then he pressed her softly up against the door, his fingers skimming clumsily across her temples and into her hair before his lips were on hers. There wasn’t any of his old self-assured ferocity. Not that she would have allowed it, anyway, but it was weird to have him this uncertain. She closed her eyes even though she didn't have to in the pitch black, her hands coming up involuntarily to rest against his chest and the cold and moist  fabric of his shirt. His skin was hot underneath it, against the heel of her palm.

He tasted like bourbon and smoke and regret, and _fuck, she still wanted him_ \- the lust was familiar and slightly frayed by habit and history - but she wasn't going to do it. She'd made that mistake too many times, already. She pushed him away, and he didn't protest, not even by body reflex; he was pliable in her hands as she turned him away.

They went to the bathroom where she made him brush his teeth and swallow two Tylenol with a big glass of water. He dressed down to his underwear, leaving his clothes in a messy pile on the floor. He was pale and scraggly in the bright bathroom light, soft belly and skinny arms, a little silly looking in his baggy white briefs. She’d noticed how his clothes seemed to be a little loose on him lately. He hadn't taken up boxing again after the divorce.

Ray caught her looking, the hope plain on his face, and for a moment she wanted to be out of her pumps and all-business pant suit. Nothing sexual, just being the Stella that Ray loved for a little while, walking around in their apartment in her old cotton undies and nothing else, reciting paragraphs of law to herself before an important exam, but she knew very well that she was being sentimental. Blame the Christmas holidays, the white wine, and Ray drunk and vulnerable.

She put him to bed with a wash tub that she found in the kitchen and filled with half an inch of water. He fell asleep instantly, one arm slung over the side of the bed and brushing against the red plastic of the tub.

She switched off the bedroom lights and walked out into the narrow kitchen. She had never been in his apartment before. It had always been Ray who had come to her, seeking her out at night, when he was drunk or unhappy, or both. Sometimes she turned him away, sometimes she let him in and slept with him, finding comfort in the familiarity. No need to seduce or reassure, both of them knowing the rules of those meetings; a mistake made a thousand times before.

She shrugged out of her coat and slid off her high heels, flexing her sore feet a couple of times. She opened the fridge expecting to find a six-pack of Stella Artois - a stupid joke that had turned into a habit - but instead she found a couple of stubby unfamiliar bottles with a blue label. She twisted one open and drank. It was cold and bitter, wonderful after a night of white wine and mixed drinks.

She looked through his cupboards, half looking for a snack but mostly just curious. She found a few canned goods, five containers of instant coffee, stacked boxes of Smarties, a box of tea, a can of dog food that must have survived both Bullitt and the move out of their apartment.

She dangled the cool bottle from her index and middle finger as she walked through his apartment. The kitchen linoleum was slightly sticky under her stockinged feet; the carpet covering the living room floor boards was plush and warm. Their old second-hand couch was apparently still alive and well, although she didn't need to sit in it to remind herself how uncomfortable it had become after they had busted the springs christening it. There was an unfamiliar blanket folded neatly across the armrest with the hole in it. The pictures on his desk were of the two of them, as children at the dance, as pimpled teenagers, and one she recognized from her time at college.

She picked one up to study the photo more closely, and dropped it with a clatter onto the table top when she heard the unmistakable sound of a lock being turned and the front door opening.

She carefully stepped away from the shards of shattered glass around her feet. There was the sound of boot heels against the hallway floor. When she turned around, the Constable was standing in the door to the living room in full attire, his heavy jacket sprinkled with droplets of rain, his boots wet. His face was red from the cold; he must have walked all the way from the party to Ray's apartment. He had a folded jacket in his hands.

He was obviously as surprised to find her there as she was to find him there. His tongue darted out to touch the dark scab on his split lip, and even though she barely knew him, she knew him well enough to recognize it as a nervous tic.

"Constable,"

"Ms. Kowalski,"

She couldn't help but smile wryly at the formality.

"I trust that Ray is -?" 

"He's sleeping. He was drunk off his ass, so I brought him home to sleep it off."

She was being deliberately crude, guessing that it would provoke him. She was fighting down a feeling of shame, as if he'd caught her in the middle of doing something forbidden. She had always believed that the best defense was a strong offense, so she strode across the room to take Ray’s jacket from him, reaching out her hand expectantly. She didn't miss the movement of his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on the fabric.

"Thank you, Constable,"

But he didn't hand it to her as she had expected. One hand left the coat to rub across his eyebrow.

"Actually, I was planning on staying."

She let her hand drop, surprised, and leaned back on her heels. Fraser flushed but he held her gaze and didn’t offer any explanations. For a moment she was taken aback, feeling her anger rising at his blank face, wondering if she had been played for a fool all along. But then she realized that Fraser had just walked to the apartment on his own, on a winter night, to return a thirty-dollar jacket.

She wanted to ask him why the hell he had a key to her husband’s apartment, except she didn't really have to. She was good at piecing evidence together: the box of tea, the dog food, the neatly folded blanket on one side of the couch. She couldn't help but suddenly wonder if Ray had even been waiting for _her_ in the lobby that evening.

It was something that had been all too easy to let herself forget after the divorce: that uneasy, half-realized suspicion that had sometimes nagged her - the lead singer in the band that Ray was in for a short while, the fellow police cadet. The boxing buddy - Taylor - and the wary and slightly shamefaced look he'd sent her as he stood on their doorstep after Ray had asked him in, obviously surprised at her presence. Ray had never understood, remaining oblivious to these friends’ expectations, and to himself.

Benton Fraser wasn't oblivious.

She turned away, needing to hide her face, grabbing the beer bottle from where she had left it on the desk. She hadn’t planned on staying, but she was not going to run away now, with her tail between her legs, like a trespasser.

She upended the bottle and emptied it swallowing steadily. It was a trick she'd learned from Ray, from going to Ray's kind of bars instead of sipping drinks with other society girls like her parents had wanted her to.

She turned back to face Fraser and he was still standing there impassively, the jacket folded in his arms, his feet slightly apart, his posture military straight.

Politely waiting for her to leave.

When they'd first met nearly a year ago she hadn't paid much attention to him; he'd seemed bland and unimportant next to Ray and Alderman Orsini. She had learned since that he wasn't the buffoonish character she had first made him out to be; working at the State Attorney’s Office she’d heard his name mentioned often enough. But she'd still disliked his manner, the passive-aggressive behavior that she had always associated with a womanish kind of weakness - the kind she had worked hard to be rid of, herself.

She had learned, though, dealing with the Warfield case, that he was persistent and uncompromising in his own way, and she felt forced to reacknowledge that again, now.

She put down the empty bottle hard on the coffee table, wanting him to jump at the loud sound in the silence. He didn't.

She'd left her coat on the kitchen counter and her pumps were in the kitchen in front of the refrigerator where she had toed them off.

When she returned, Fraser had taken off his hat and hung the jacket over the back of a chair, already making himself at home. He was too big for the couch, she thought with a mean satisfaction, it had to be damned uncomfortable for him to sleep there.

He followed her out into the hallway, and when she turned towards him, he extended his hand to shake hers goodbye. She looked down at his hand, incredulous, barking out a laugh. Like they had just gone a couple of rounds on the tennis court, _good game, old chap._

But, unbelievably, the confused expression on his face told her that he was being earnest. Handsome and wholesome and earnest. And fuck it, she had to hand it to him - he was a strong player. It was the kind of reluctant respect that she usually reserved for really good prosecutors.

“You're going to take him away from me, aren’t you?”

He stood frozen, his hand still stretched out like a fool. Stuck, she guessed, between being polite and being honest.

“Only if I can.”

She bypassed his politely outstretched hand and stepped in close, guiding his head down with a hand at the back of his neck. She heard his startled intake of breath, saw his eyes widen with something that looked a little bit like apprehension, before she crushed her lips against his, feeling sharp teeth behind his lips.

To the extent that she had thought about it she had only intended to raise his hackles - acting on some instinct that this might be her only way of getting to him.

He was stiff and tense against her at first, but then he was kissing her back with a passion she hadn't expected from him at all. She was reminded of the speculations that circulated about his nature, about his self-destructive streak, his drive towards women that were dangerous to him.

Kissing him was a strong contrast to kissing Ray. Fraser was clean-shaven without any hint of stubble, his uniform was thick and cold through her shirt where she was pressed against him. He seemed smooth and strong and solid. His hot, scentless breath rushing over her face was the only outward sign of his arousal.

She was surprised by it, but the transition from fighting to fucking had always been easy for her. She could see it now, how it would go down, and she wanted it; to fumble out of clothes, and fuck on the couch with Ray sleeping in the bedroom next door. It would be fucked up and hot as hell.

Except no. No fucking way was she doing this.

She pushed herself out of his grasp and she recognized his reflex to grab for her, even though it was barely the twitch of a muscle.

She stepped away, smoothing down her shirt nervously, hating her fair skin, knowing that the mottled flush spreading from her breasts and creeping up her neck was betraying her. She looked up at Fraser, expecting outrage - or arrogance, maybe - but not the kind of controlled dread plain on his face, pale beneath his bruises and an angry blush like a rash across his cheekbones.

It caught her by surprise how badly she'd rattled him; how badly he must have shaken himself by responding to her. Maybe she had been reading him wrong, all along. She had been too caught up in the fight to really appreciate how strongly it had to grate against his nature to fight with her, to project his intimate emotions to her, of all people.

She buttoned up her coat clumsily, her fingers numb and uncooperative, wanting out before he started apologizing, before they had to talk about this.

When she reached the door she looked down at her hand resting on the door handle, hesitating.

"There was this boxing buddy... Taylor... He doesn't know, Fraser; he's not going to figure it out, unless..."

She stopped, furious with herself. She didn't know why she suddenly felt like she owed him something. Fraser didn't say anything. It wasn't her place to offer advice, anyway. She turned down the handle and walked out of the apartment. She was leaving now.

She walked down the stairs and stepped out on the sleet-covered pavement. She'd probably end up having to walk a couple of blocks to find a cab, and it was going to be cold and uncomfortable, but she thought that maybe she needed that.


End file.
